Strainprint ™ App,Tracking Your Cannabis Intake

Whether you are a medical cannabis patient or a recreational user, tracking your cannabis consumption habits are not only essential but also largely beneficial. Some people find it helpful to chronical their treatment journey in a paper-based journal but often find it inconvenient to capture each interaction and thus have an inaccurate record of useful treatment interactions and outcomes data. For those patients that are looking to learn more about what works best (medically or recreationally), there is an innovative mobile app that provides guidance – Strainprint™.

Strainprint™ is a data and analytics company that has developed a mobile application to help patients to learn what works best for them. Patients log their experience in the Strainprints™ App and then are presented with personalized statistical analysis on use and efficacy scoring to provide a customized experience for each patient. This anonymous data is then made available to doctors, physicians and clinics to provide decision support regarding cannabis treatments so that patients can better interact with their healthcare provider and make better product selection decisions – based on real-world patient use. The Strainprint app enables cannabis patients to track and understand the efficacy of their cannabis use by strain, quantity, the method of ingestion and dose.

More on Strainprint™

Strainprint™, based in Toronto, Canada was founded in 2016 and the company launched its first commercial product in February of 2017 after a year of exhaustive research and development. Strainprint provides a HIPAA, PIPEDA and PHIPA compliant solution (data protection standards that exceed the requirements of Health Canada and the US Department of Health) and has a database that contains a growing database of over 2500 strains and products available under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations program (ACMPR). Patients can also add their own unique/personal strains – over 1000 dispensary sourced products from Canada and the US are also pre-loaded into Strainprint. The App is available for both Android and Apple iOS devices from their respective stores – GooglePlay and the Apple AppStore.

We had a chance to speak with the Strainprint team and to gain even further insight into how the company evolved, the solution they are providing and what features they have included in the development of their app.

First off, thank you for speaking with me today. I would love for our readers to hear the Strainprints™ “elevator pitch”.

Strainprint™ is a free Medical Cannabis App that:

Helps Patients understand how cannabis interacts with their body, allowing them to choose the best strain/product, ingestion method, and effectiveness, to help them live symptom-free.

Equips the medical and pharmaceutical industry, licensed producers, government and the cannabis community at large with much needed reliable data based on real-world patient interaction.

I would love to learn more about your team, who are the founders and how has the team evolved?

The initial idea for the app came from Founder, Stephanie Karasick who started using Cannabis 3 years ago based on the recommendation of her physician for the treatment of PTSD related symptoms. Stephanie started her journey by trying a variety of different strains from MMPR (government program before ACMPR) and journaling her cannabis intake in a hand-written journal. Stephanie felt that it would be so much easier to track her experience if there was a mobile app for her phone that would help her to track her cannabis consumption and success while treating her symptoms related to PTSD.

She and her husband Evan Karasick, who is Chief of Customer Care at Strainprint did an exhaustive search to see if such an application existed. There was no solution available at the time so, they decided to actually develop a prototype of the app, which went over quite well. From there, they realized they had an amazing idea that could help thousands of medical cannabis patients, just like Steph.

Andrew Muroff, CEO of Strainprint™ and David Berg, President & CTO of Strainprint were quickly added to the team of Founders. Their combined 40+ years in the tech industry and the fact that they are also both medical cannabis patients in addition to having a wealth of business expertise, having held previous leadership positions at various organizations, make up the Strainprint Founders ‘Dream Team’.

Looking back on the ideation of Strainprint, what would you say is the pain point Strainprint is solving?

At its core, Strainprint™ is all about helping patients. Strainprint is an application developed by patients for patients – we have a unique understanding of the challenges faced by new patients, their physicians and the clinical experience – we also had an idea of how to make the experience more supportive for all parties involved. The app supports those using medical cannabis to make the best strain and ingestions method choices to help them live happily.

In addition to helping individual patients on their journey, Strainprint also provides guidance to the medical community by providing access to an anonymous dataset that includes over 6 million data points and over 350,000 tracked patient sessions. Strainprint has quickly become the leader as a provider of reliable, clinical-grade, granular data. As we know, the amount of data in the cannabis industry is sorely lacking. Strainprint’s data is used in a variety of ways – we can help Licensed Producers in determining business decisions, we can help the medical community with much-needed research, we can help the Government in shaping policy. The current, and future use of our rapidly growing dataset is fascinating!

I have seen a variety of suggested ways to track your cannabis consumption, but from my, research Strainprint™ is definitely leading the way. What would you say is Strainprint’s competitive advantages compared to other companies in this space?

One of Strainprint’s competitive advantages is that we are genuinely empathetic to our patients and we appreciate them. They are top-of-mind in everything that we do. So much so, that we developed a loyalty program – Strainpoints™ – which rewards our users by way of points each time they track medication sessions.

Once our users bank enough Strainpoints, they are able to redeem those points for items such as t-shirts, toques, rolling trays, grinders, vaporizers, discounts off Cannabis from licensed producers and more.

In addition to the loyalty program what sets Strainprint apart is that since we are patients, we truly understand what our users are going through. The world of medical cannabis can be confusing and often frustrating. We have over 350 medical conditions and 40 associated symptoms that users are medicating for, many are enduring awful pain, or having dark days due to depression. Founder, Steph particularly understands this with her own PTSD, her personalized touch with sending each-and-every loyalty redemption package out with a hand-written note is one of the ways we are able to reach out to our users and let them know we are not just a company, we are people (and patients) too!

Another competitive advantage is that our app allows us to be the most significant longitudinal medical cannabis study focused on granular data. With over 350,000 tracked sessions and 6 million data points and growing, allows us to be a leader in the cannabis data space – we are tracking patient interactions in real time.

Launching a startup is hard, and I believe it is vital to share highlights and achievements. Any achievements Strainprints™ accomplished in 2017 that you would like to share with our readers?

We launched our app last February (2017), and in just one year we’ve amassed a great deal of data with over 6 million data points – this data set is growing at a compound rate of 42% per month. Through our Loyalty Program, we’ve given away thousands of grinders, vapes and other swag. It’s happening fast, and it’s extremely exciting to have the ability to help shape the global cannabis industry while also helping thousands of ACMPR medical cannabis patients treat symptoms better.

After testing out the Strainprint™ app, I would like to comment on the user interface, it is very user-friendly and easy to follow. What are some interesting things you noticed about how the users interact with the app that you have found surprising that you can share?

Firstly, thank you! We worked hard when we initially designed the app to make sure it was super easy to use, even if you were very medicated.

A few things we did not entirely anticipate, was that many people are using the app for accountability. Yes, it tells you which strains work best for you, but it also can act as a record of how much you’re consuming. A lot of long-time cannabis users have written and told us that they have been able to cut back on the amount they’re using. We have many very dedicated and loyal users who view Strainprint as part of their treatment regimen.

Thank you for sharing more about Strainprint with our readers. Before we let you go, are there any exciting things the DCN community should keep an eye on for Strainprints™ in 2018?

We’re excited that our analytics platform – Strainprint Analytics (™) is shaping the global cannabis industry by empowering clinics, LPs, retailers, pharma, and government with real-time decision support tools while helping thousands of ACMPR patients to treat a variety of symptoms and live healthier lives successfully.

Another exciting announcement, we will be expanding our loyalty points sponsorship/donation program. Currently, Strainprint users are able to donate their points to Veterans – we see this program expanding, and users being able to continue to choose to donate their points to individuals in need.